


Why Count Bases When You Can Count Gears

by EndoplasmicPanda



Series: Endo's Oneshots [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Learning to Drive, M/M, The author self projects for 5000 words, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, breakfast Tacos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: “Seriously, dude,” Peter says, cutting him off before he can say anything else. “We just take the train everywhere. It’s kinda what we do here.”“Peter,” Harley says, a little conspiratorially, “do you not know how to drive?”The B train blasts through the station just in time to mask Peter's groan. He gives up on fancy cell phone gymnastics and plucks it from his shoulder before the subway’s hot, nasty backdraft grabs it for him, moving away from the platform. “I… I don’t, no.”





	Why Count Bases When You Can Count Gears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enzhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enzhe/gifts).



It starts, as all good things do, with failed dinner plans.

“I’m sorry, man,” Peter says, propping his phone between his cheek and his shoulder, trying to press it into that little space between his backpack strap and his neck so it wouldn’t fall out and sink into the disgusting abyss of the sunken subway platform tracks. “I’d have to rent a car, and, uhh, I don’t think May can take the time off to drive me all the way out there.”

Harley’s breathy laugh translates strangely through the phone, but Peter has it memorized well enough to fill in the gaps where the station’s shitty cell service cuts out. “Seriously? It’s only, like, a few hours away. You can’t just drive down here yourself? Having access to a car is SO much easier.”

Peter winces. “I could always see if Amtrak’s got anything left? It’s a bit short notice, and’ll probably cost a fortune, but--”

He can practically _hear_ the gears turning in Harley’s mind, trying to churn out a solution to their predicament in the most efficient way possible. It would be _incredibly_ attractive, as it tended to be, if he wasn’t aiming all of that sexy, sexy brainpower on something Peter wasn’t particularly proud of.

“Seriously, dude,” Peter says, cutting him off before he can say anything else. “We just take the train everywhere. It’s kinda what we do here.”

“Peter,” Harley says, a little conspiratorially, “do you not know how to drive?”

The B train blasts through the station just in time to mask Peter's groan. He gives up on fancy cell phone gymnastics and plucks it from his shoulder before the subway’s hot, nasty backdraft grabs it for him, moving away from the platform. “I… I don’t, no.”

“Oh.” More gears turning. Sometimes Peter imagines it like a clock, the way all the little rotating gears and all the little motions in Harley’s head translate to the tiny, calculated movements everyone sees on the exterior. But they weren’t tiny. Not actually. It takes miles of movement inside a clock to get it to tell time. “Well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have suggested you come to town for a spur-of-the-moment dinner thing.”

Peter knows Harley here, too, and knows well enough that this _wasn’t_ just a spur-of-the-moment dinner thing. He’d been thinking of this for days, no doubt. Trying to weasel out of commitments and scrape some free time for himself out of whatever was left of his life after his small legion of extracurricular clubs at MIT had tried to divvy it up amongst themselves like a bunch of feudal lords. 

“It’s alright,” Peter mumbles, because he’s embarrassed - not about the car thing, about the wasted time thing. He knows how important time is to someone like Harley. He smiles. “The fact you thought about it at all is… really nice, you know? Sometimes I forget to get out of the house. I get caught up in stuff.”

“And you forget to eat,” Harley adds.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Peter says. “May’s on my case about it enough. But really - thanks for thinking of me. Maybe we can work something out for later in the week.”

“Hmm,” Harley says. There go the gears again.

The sign above the platform tells him that his train is next in line, and Peter switches ears, moving the phone from one side to the other. “Hey - listen, my train’s almost here. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he adds, throwing in something that reminds him startlingly of May once he’s let the words out of his mouth. “Sorry. Do stupid stuff if you want. Maybe as long as it’s not, like, _too_ stupid, though, because then Mr. Stark will get mad at both of us.”

Harley laughs again. More of it comes through this time, and Peter revels in the fact he’s the cause of it, even if it was just him rambling again. “Thanks, Peter,” Harley says.

Peter’s train pulls up to the station in a screech of sparks and brakes. The doors hiss open, and Peter steps through the sea of people disembarking to squeeze into a seat in the corner.

“My train’s here,” he says. The call is already starting to cut out, but he doesn’t want to stop talking. “Gotta go.”

“Okay,” Harley says. “See you soon.”

* * *

Four hours later finds Peter halfway through an assignment for his electrostatics class, stomach grumbling unpleasantly like a backup instrument to the song he’s got playing on repeat in his headphones. He fumbles for his backpack, finally finding a problem worthy of calculator use halfway down the problem set, and turns his head just in time for the door to creak open, bright streaks of hallway light cutting into the accidental darkness of his bedroom.

“Oh, dang, sorry, Aunt May,” he says, leaping out of his chair. “I’m alive in here, I promise.” Shit. What time is it? Was the sun down when he started? Apparently not - he reaches over and flips the light switch.

But it’s not May that’s there when he turns back around. Instead, it’s Harley, holding a dangerously greasy bag of tacos in one hand and sipping through a Slurpee in the other. “Howdy,” he says, smirking.

“Harley, no,” Peter says, heart stopping just a little. “What are you doing? You can’t be up here. You have class in the morning, and all that driving’s not good for you, you know, you could fall asleep behind the wheel--”

Harley laughs, a proper, vocalized laugh this time, and steps into his room, sweeping him into a careful hug. “Hey,” he mumbles quietly into Peter’s ear. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Peter looks down at the tacos Harley was careful enough to keep off to the side during their embrace. “Well, as long as you brought a peace offering.”

“Gas station food,” Harley says, snorting. He jiggles the bag; it looks dangerously close to giving out at the bottom. Peter swears he can almost make out the aluminum foil wrapping of each taco through the greasy paper. “Only the finest quality.”

They split apart; Peter slides back down into his desk chair, no longer interested in his homework in the slightest, while Harley throws himself down onto Peter’s bed, peeling open the bag and divvying up its contents into two separate little mounds.

“They’re breakfast tacos,” he says, peeking inside the wrappers, one by one. “Hopefully that’s not too sacreligious.”

“Hey, it’s breakfast o’clock somewhere,” Peter says, snorting. He grabs for the pile he knows Harley set aside for him.

They eat in silence; at one point, Harley gets up to grab Peter’s electrostatics homework off his desk, and Peter watches his face twist into a funny shape when he recognizes what it is.

“It’s not anything crazy,” he says, trying to break the ice a little. Harley’s barely eating; Peter knows there’s something else going on, something else he’s not saying yet but trying to work up the courage to bring up. “You probably do that stuff in your sleep back at MIT.”

“You’d be surprised,” Harley says, smiling. “Although I think you dropped a minus sign in this one.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Peter squawks, yanking the paper back. “I’m not finished yet.”

More eating. More silence. Outside, New York City churns along like a well-oiled machine of its own. Peter decides to give Harley his space and enjoy the company instead.

“You could have gone,” Harley says quietly. “You would have had no problems getting in.”

Peter winces. He lets his desk chair swivel around and he mounts it backwards, leaning over the backrest. “Yeah. I know.”

Harley looks down at his feet. His hair slides down his face. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’ve--”

“No, you’re right,” Peter says. “I think about it all the time, too. We could be in the same city right now. I know I probably would’ve gotten a scholarship, too - maybe not one as good as yours, but--”

“You would’ve,” Harley says, interrupting. 

“Yeah, well.” Peter shrugs. “I dunno. I just felt like this was something I had to _earn_ , y’know? And Mr. Stark pretty much owns the place up in Cambridge… I just felt like I’d be taking the place of someone that deserved it more. Like you,” he adds, looking up to find Harley already staring at him.

“You know that’s not true,” Harley says. “You’re the smartest guy I know, and I’m not just saying that because you’re my boyfriend and I’m supposed to say that.”

Peter flushes a little at the word. It’s still a new thing. A _very_ new thing. A very new _good_ thing. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harley says. Even in the brightness of his bedroom, his smile is brighter. He reaches out, careful, and presses a palm into Peter’s shoulder. “You can do literally whatever you want. Seriously. You’ve got the brains to pull off anything.”

“See, now I know you’re just buttering me up,” Peter says, but he’s smiling, too.

“I mean, I can’t butter you up any more than you’re already buttering up yourself,” Harley says, crossing his arms. “You’re going to Columbia. On your own. It’s insane.”

“Columbia Schmolumbia,” Peter says, pressing his face into the meat of his arm. “I just wanna be around you.”

It’s a startlingly honest thing, something that slips out of his mouth when he didn’t mean for it to.

“Yeah,” Harley says. “Yeah, me too.”

He stands, tugging at Peter’s arm, pulling him out of the chair. “Okay, fine, come on. I admit it. I’m not here just to eat tacos and be depressing.”

“Oh, God, Harley, what did you do?” Peter mutters, stumbling after him - down the hallway, toward the front door, toward the elevator. 

But Harley’s just smiling. “Come on. You’ll like it, trust me.”

Peter doesn’t say that he already did, more than he cared to admit, and that he would have gone with Harley pretty much anywhere so long as it didn’t involve bodily harm or dismemberment - and even then, he’d still probably consider it. 

They burst through the front doors of the building and out onto the street, Harley still tugging Peter along by the hand, looking more excited than Peter has ever seen him. When he looks over his shoulder to stare back at him, all toothy smiles, Peter can’t help but toothily smile back.

The sidewalks are dirty and messy and clogged with parked cars for blocks, but after slipping between three buildings and dangerously jaywalking through a nearly-empty intersection, Harley leads him toward the corner of the local park where the streets aren’t so jammed and parking spots are easier to find.

“Here we are,” Harley says proudly, stopping in front of one spot in particular, and Peter nearly chokes.

“What?” he says, gawking. “When? When did you… _What?”_

Harley grins. “You couldn’t drive to me, so I drove to you.”

He’d seen pictures of Harley’s prized Mustang, a ruby-red, white-streaked menace of a car with a custom-built engine Harley machined himself from spare parts he found lying around in high school. It sparkled - _sparkled_ in the streetlights.

“I fixed the transmission last month,” Harley says, a little too smug for his own good. But Peter’s willing to give him a pass, considering just _how_ much this car means to him. He could recite the entire VIN from memory, for Christ’s sake. If Harley ever had a child, it would be second in line for his inheritance behind this Mustang. “I spent a Saturday driving it up from Rose Hill so I’d have it to use while I’m at school.”

“Dude,” Peter says, still gobsmacked. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“C’mon!” Harley’s already throwing open the driver’s door, slipping behind the wheel like he belongs there, like it’s an extension of himself. In a manner of speaking, it is.

Peter takes his time to walk around to the other side, taking it all in, this piece of Harley few had the privilege of experiencing first-hand. The Tennessee plates are a foreign sight on the streets of Brooklyn, just as mysterious as the boy that’s waiting for him, waiting to be learned.

Because Harley’s right. He _can_ do whatever he sets his mind towards. It’s just that Harley hasn’t quite realized the only thing on Peter’s mind these days is Harley himself.

The passenger door comes open with a massively satisfying mechanical clunk, and when Peter slides in beside Harley, the car smells like gasoline and time and _love_ . It’s all black, all fading, cracked leather that looks intentional rather than abused, all sharp corners and red dials that match the rest of the car’s color scheme. Peter had never been in a particularly old car before, but he never knew how much one could feel like _home_.

“Ready?” Harley asks, and his grin fits in with the decor perfectly, like it was just another fixture on the Mustang’s instrument cluster. 

The engine ignites underneath them like a loaded rocket, and it feels more like its coming apart in Peter’s soul than three feet in front of him. The car barks and snaps and bites at the evening air, feral, and when Harley slides it into gear and lets it loose on the streets, it’s every inch the dog Peter hoped it would be.

Even traffic is made better by the thump, thump, thumping of the Mustang’s cylinders, shaking the whole car while they wait at red lights, and then they’re crossing the Washington Bridge and Harley lets loose on the throttle with a whoop and the world feels _right_.

Peter is familiar with electronics. He’s familiar with motors and magnets and the machines that make the world go, like train engines and electric scooters and those flat escalators in airports that make you walk twice as fast.

But the world is bigger than New York, as much as New York would prefer he forget. There’s a place in Tennessee where a boy put his heart into a car, bundled it up underneath aluminum and iron, and now it’s here, a piece of him, a piece of the world, ferrying him toward the countryside upstate where the air doesn’t have flavor and the sky feels exotic in its emptiness. 

They’re on the road for what feels like hours. Peter watches Harley drive more than he watches the world zip by outside, watches him shift up, up, up in gear and then downdowndown again when a minivan cuts him off in the left lane.

This is his element, Peter knows, has _always_ known. Harley and Mr. Stark bonded over this kind of thing long before Peter ever met either of them. They’re both tinkerers. It’s nothing like the life-or-death, on-or-off world of electricity, where everything hinges on the flip of a switch or the spark of a graph or numbers on an oscilloscope screen.

“Don’t fall asleep, Peter,” Harley says over the rumble, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “You’ll mess up your sleep schedule.”

“Mm,” Peter says, already half out of it. “Shoulda thought of that before you dragged me away on some magical adventure.”

When Harley smiles, all quiet and dopey and just for him, it’s a little bit blinding.

They pull off of the interstate toward a place where there’s hardly any lights, more trees than buildings. Peter looks out the window, confused, and then they’re pulling into an empty mall parking lot and Harley’s throwing the Mustang into neutral and yanking up the parking brake and giving him this _look_ that Peter doesn’t particularly know what to do with.

And then he gets out.

“What?” Peter asks, hand instinctively flying to his own door handle. “What are we doing? Where are you going?”

But Harley’s already halfway around the car, a little pep in his step. He half slides across the hood of the car, yelping with a smile when he remembers the engine is warm and breathing fire out the front end. 

“Come on!” And then he’s pulling Peter’s door open for him, and oh.

_Oh._

“Come on,” Harley says, smiling, grabbing Peter by the arm and spinning him a little in place, in this bizarre, empty parking lot where there’s nothing around but open space and tall, looming overhead lights and an overturned shopping cart in the corner. “I’ve always wanted to feel what it’s like to ride shotgun in my own car.”

“What,” Peter says, a little high-pitched, a little frantic. “No, Harley, no - I can’t. I can’t do that. I can’t--”

But Harley just smiles at him, like this is some sort of master plan of his and he’s had the plan worked out for hours now. Again, Peter is reminded by the fact that he probably did. “Peter,” he says, a little softer this time. “I trust you. Come on.”

He tries, _tries_ to walk around to the other side of the car without shaking, tries his best not to let Harley’s heavy gaze affect him more than it already is, tries not to let out a warbled breath when he settles uncomfortably behind the driver’s seat. Harley’s already there, already in the seat next to him, watching him with this sappy, unknowable grin that _does things_ to Peter’s insides, the parts that aren’t being ripped to shreds by nerves.

“Hey,” Harley says, suddenly serious. “I’ve got you. Okay? I want to do this. This is okay. You’re _okay._ ”

Peter swallows. He still hasn’t touched the steering wheel.

“It’s not going to bite you,” Harley says, laughing. He reaches forward, turns the air conditioning off, rolls his window down with wide twists of his arm, leans across Peter (oh my _God_ , Peter thinks) and rolls his window down, too.

“Less distractions,” Harley explains, buckling himself in. “This way you can hear the car. Hear the engine. That’s the most important part, you know.”

Peter swallows again. “Yeah,” he says, a little weakly.

“Okay,” Harley says, quiet. “Baby steps. You don’t have to touch anything else. First thing’s first - find the right pedal.”

Peter does.

“Find it?”

Peter nods.

“Okay,” Harley says again, pleased. “The car’s in neutral. You can’t hurt it. You can press all three of the pedals and it won’t move.” He points. “Try it.”

Shakily, Peter reaches out with the toe of his shoe, taps gently at the right pedal. 

The Mustang growls. On the dashboard, one of the gauges lights up. Peter taps the pedal again, watches the gauge crawl up, up, up as he presses harder, presses longer.

“That’s the gas,” Harley says. He snorts. “Obviously. Okay, so the pedal to the left of it is the brakes. That’s the important one.”

Instinctively, Peter moves his foot to the brake, holding it there. He doesn’t dare press it, doesn’t dare move away. 

“Ah, good,” Harley says, as though he’s passed some sort of unspoken test. “That’s the best way to do it. Always have your foot ready on the brake so you can hit it if you need to.” He nudges Peter’s shoulder. “Go on.”

The brake pedal feels spongey and strange when he presses his toe into it, like there’s a rubber ball underneath that’s not giving away. He looks down, just to be sure, then presses it again.

“Okay, so those are the big two,” Harley says. “That’s all you need to use to drive most cars. But this” --he taps the stick in the center console, which is a strange-looking metal rod with a red-and-gold capsule at the top-- “isn’t a normal car.”

“Does it have ejector seats?” Peter asks weakly.

Harley just winks at him. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

They sit there for a bit, Harley letting Peter get familiar with the gas and the brake, tapping one and tapping the other and at one point tapping both, before Harley grunts, looking pained, and tells him gently that you’re not supposed to do that. Oh. Duh.

“Next step,” Harley says, eventually, after they’d been sitting there for ten minutes and the car was starting to feel like a bit of an oven. “That pedal on the left.”

“What does that one do?” Peter asks, despite knowing Harley was about to tell him anyway.

“Clutch pedal,” Harley says. “It’s different from the other two. You use your left foot on it instead of the right, for one thing.”

“Okay…”

“And you have to press it all the way in every time,” Harley says. “Seriously. That’s really important. You can break stuff if you don’t do that.”

Peter’s guts have started to vulcanize again. “Oh. Um. I don’t want--”

Harley snorts. “Don’t worry. Who do you think you’re dealing with? Besides, she can take a beating. I learned how to drive stick in this car, too, and she’s still in one piece.” He taps gently at the dashboard. “Mostly.”

Peter shakes his head. “I dunno, dude. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea anymore.”

“Baby steps,” Harley repeats, pressing a gentle hand to where Peter’s digging his fingers into his own thigh. “I’ll shift. Just focus on the way the car moves.”

“Wait, what?” Peter says, panicking. “Moving? Already? I just--”

Harley’s hand is already hovering over the gear lever. “Don’t worry about the gas pedal for now. Just focus on the clutch and the brake. Feel the car. You’ll be able to tell.”

“Tell what?” 

“Press the clutch all the way in and hold it,” Harley instructs gently. Peter does what he’s told, reluctantly, pressing and pressing and pressing until the pedal is even with the floorboard. “Okay. I’m going to put it in first, now. Don’t take your foot off.”

With one hand, he takes the Mustang off of park. It moves a little, no longer tied down from gravity in the parking lot’s slight incline. Peter panics. His foot slips off the clutch in an explosive click.

Harley looks at him, hand just barely wrapped around the gear stick. “Dude. What did I just say?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says, wincing. He pushes the clutch back into place, doing his best to hold his foot still. “It slipped.”

“Alright, that’s fine,” Harley says. “You’ll make some mistakes, but that’s okay. That’s part of the fun.” 

Peter can feel the engine underneath his toes, thrumming along without a care in the world, like Peter’s not about to vibrate out of his skin. He can’t ruin this. He _can’t_ . This is Harley’s baby. The fact he was trusting Peter with it at all was something entirely, but the moment he messed it up and broke something expensive, something _rare_ , he knew Harley would come back to his senses and everything would fall apart. Their nice night together, ruined.

But Harley’s still looking at him, still smiling in that way that Peter knows is because he’s not realized he’s doing it yet, because Harley’s always been so careful about things like that. There’s room for Peter to mess up, sure, but Harley’s got just as much on the line in unseen places Peter doesn’t know about yet. It’s like looking through foggy glass: he can see the shapes, knows that there’s something there, but can’t make out the specifics.

This is important to Harley. Doing this? It matters. He should try for that reason and that reason alone.

“Are you ready?” Harley asks, hand on the gear lever.

Peter tests his hold on the clutch and nods, letting out a sharp breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Do it.”

At first, nothing happens. The gear lever is in a new place, no longer rattling and rumbling in the center console between them but instead pointing true toward the windshield, waiting.

“Let off the clutch,” Harley says. “Slowly. Very slowly. Don’t touch anything else. You’ll feel it.”

He does. It’s a strange sensation. At first, nothing continues to happen, and then Peter looks up and realizes the car is moving, realizes they’re drifting forward, impossibly slow. He jerks, startled, and the clutch comes up a bit faster than he anticipates. The Mustang leaps forward, whining as if in pain, but it doesn’t stall. It just keeps rolling.

“Wow,” Harley says, laughing. “You’re already doing better than I did. I killed the engine, like, five times before I could get it to coast like this.”

They’re moving, and Peter’s kind of still scared, but also kind of amazed that this is happening at all, that he’s doing this, that the car’s listening to _him_ and not anyone else. 

He grips the steering wheel, finally, when he realizes that they’re coming up on the edge of the parking lot, and starts to turn it, feeling the entire weight of the car resting against the skin of his palms. He turns it slow, he turns it fast, wiggling it back and forth at one point (which makes Harley snort). 

“Hit the gas a little,” he says, nudging Peter in the arm by the elbow. He does.

The car leaps forward, pressing his head into the back of his seat, and the engine whine whine whines, louder and louder, all the gauges on the dashboard lighting up and dancing higher and higher.

“Okay, push the clutch in again,” Harley shouts over the engine, and Peter does. This time, he watches as Harley twists the gear lever from the passenger seat, moving it around in a strangely beautiful dance, letting it settle on ‘2’. “Okay, let it off easy again!”

Peter does. The Mustang’s engine drops back down to a low growl, the rising numbers behind the steering wheel in front of him falling to something less stressful-looking, and the entire car jerks, thrown off its rhythm.

And Harley is _laughing_ , holding his hand out the window, eyes shut and smile wide. Peter’s heart thunders in his chest, loud, and it’s only after a few moments of intense, terrified joy that he realizes it’s the car’s engine again.

“Clutch!” Harley shouts, and Peter hits the clutch. They change to third gear. The parking lot is _screaming_ by now. Peter knows they’re only going thirty miles per hour or so, if that, but he doesn’t have the skill to look down at the speedometer, out the front window, and at his boyfriend all at the same time, so he settles for the latter two instead and does his best with the rest.

The far end of the lot approaches faster than Peter was expecting, and he turns yanking the steering wheel hard, sending the two of them crashing into each other. Harley reaches up and grabs at the “oh-shit” handle, but he’s still smiling, and Peter’s not dead yet, so things must still be going alright.

“Okay, brake,” Harley says, halfway through a giggle. He sits up a bit faster, eyes going wide, smile fading just a little. Peter’s still looking at him. “You’re coming up on a light post. Brake, Peter. Brake!”

Peter forgets which pedal is which. He hits the gas first, which is _terrifying_ , all the horses under the hood thundering out onto the concrete lot and into Peter’s ears like the roar of an imminent thunderstorm. He gives up, slams on the clutch, but nothing happens, and the light pole is getting closer and closer, brighter and brighter underneath the glare of the Mustang’s headlights, and Peter is suddenly very aware of all the worries that he should have listened to when he started--

Harley yanks the E-brake. The Mustang screeches out into the night sky, tires locking up, leaving a pair of parallel black lines in the parking lot. The back ends swivels out, just a little, and Peter does nothing but grip the steering wheel and pray he didn’t fuck up too bad.

The Mustang stops, engine stalled from when Peter’s foot slipped off the clutch without him realizing, and everything is _silent_. Dead silent. His heart is in his ears, which makes everything sharper, more real.

Oh shit. _Shit_ , he almost wrecked Harley’s Mustang. He almost--

Harley whoops, long and loud, shouting out the window. Peter just watches him, eyes wide, concerned. Is he angry? Is he going to kick him out? 

But then Harley’s looking at him, and he’s smiling so impossibly, impossibly wide, and he’s reaching across the car to yank at Peter’s shirt and they’re kissing, lips meeting over the center console.

Oh.

Okay.

Peter snorts, more surprised at himself than anything, but then he’s also reminded of how fucking _goofy_ Harley is, and they’re laughing into each other’s mouths, and it’s probably the best day Peter’s ever had, if he’s honest.

“That,” Peter says, sinking his forehead into the crook of Harley’s neck, “was _so scary_ , dude.”

“What? You were a natural!”

Peter smiles into Harley’s skin. “Let’s switch back. I don’t think I have any more of that in me for the night.”

They peel apart carefully; Harley’s still grinning, and isn’t _that_ just the most amazing thing, Peter thinks, and then they’re performing half of a Chinese fire drill, meeting in the middle for another kiss, because why not?

Harley settles into his seat, humming a little to himself. The engine comes back to life with the grumble-grind of the starter and Harley’s key in the ignition, and they’re off again, launching across the parking lot by the grace of his even gear changes and careful footwork. 

He looks at Peter out of the corner of his eye, just as they’re coming to the edge of the lot, and then he throws the car into first, yanking the wheel to the right, and floors it. 

Peter whimpers, surprised, grappling with whatever he can find to wrap his hands around. One hand ends up on the “oh-shit” handle, and the other, somehow, ends up on Harley’s, wrapped around where it’s still gripping the gear shift. They look at each other, the world spinning around them in a white-clouded, blurry mess, and everything feels right.

Harley pulls them out of the donut with a smooth, one-handed flourish, and they peel out into the nighttime like a red-streaked, tire-burning bullet of boy.

He doesn’t fall asleep on the way back, as much as he desperately wants to. He doesn’t pull away from Harley’s hand, either, and together the two of them work through the gears to merge onto the interstate, to avoid yet another minivan that cuts Harley off, again, in the left lane.

They’re within the shadows of Manhattan when Harley speaks again, smiling, all teeth. “See?” he says, and taps their conjoined hands into the gear stick when they stop at a stoplight, almost home. “You can do anything. Anything you want.”

For once, Peter believes it.  


**Author's Note:**

> This is a very very late birthday gift to my absolutely incredible writer friend and critique partner, **[Enzhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enzhe/pseuds/enzhe)**. I wrote this in a 12 hour fugue state after I finished reading the update to **[one of her Harley/Peter fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18655264)** sO THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT ENZHE THIS SHIP IS TOO PURE I CAN'T HANDLE IT
> 
> I also needed to get my Feelings™ out about my own Mustang, whom I love dearly and with my whole heart. His name is Adam and he's my son and I LOVE HIM SO MUCH
> 
> Also, if you caught the reference to the flash grenade Tony gives Harley in Iron Man 3, you earn a cookie. 😏
> 
> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> (NINJA EDIT: I swear I know how cars work and the difference between left and right I SWEAR GUYS)
> 
> **[Twitter](https://twitter.com/EndoWrites) | [Tumblr](https://endowrites.tumblr.com)**


End file.
